that Heads an Army to him that is but Master of a Family or of one single Servant the formal Reason of a thing equally extending it self to every particular of the same kind It is a Proposition of Eternal Verity that None can Govern while he is Despised We may as well imagine that there may be a King without Majesty a Supreme without Soveraignty It is a Paradox and a Direct contradiction in Practise for where Contempt takes place the very Causes and Capacities of Government cease Men are so farr form being Governed by a despised Person that they will not so much as be taught by Him Truth it self shall lose its Credit if Delivered by a Person that has none As on the Contrary be but a Person in Vogue and Credit with the Multitude he shall be able to commend and set off whatsoever he says to authorize any Nonsence and to make Popular rambling incoherent Stuff seasoned with Twang and Tautology pass for high Rhetorick and moving Preaching such indeed as a Zealous Tradesman would even Live and Dye under And now I suppose it is no ill Topick of Argumentation to shew the Prevalence of Contempt by the contrary Influences of Respect which thus as it were Dubbs every little pettit Admired person Lord and Commander of all his Admirers And certain it is that the Ecclesiastical as well as the Civil Governour has cause to pursue the same Methods of Securing and Confirming himself the grounds and means of Government being founded upon the same bottom of Nature in both though the Circumstances and Relative Considerations of the Persons may differ And I have nothing to say more upon this Head but that if Church-men are called upon to Discharge the parts of Governours they may with the highest Reason expect those Supports and Helps that are indispensably Requisite thereunto and that those men are but Trapann'd who are called to Govern being invested with Authority but bereaved of Power which according to a true and plain Estimate of things is nothing else but to mock and betray them into a Splendid and Magisterial way of being Ridiculous And thus much for the ill Effects and destructive Influence that Contempt has upon Government I pass now to the 2d. Thing which is to shew the Groundless Causes upon which Church-Rulers are frequently Despised Concerning which I shall premise this That nothing can be a reasonable Ground of Despising a man but some Fault or other chargeable upon him and nothing can be a Fault that is not Naturally in a mans power to prevent Otherwise it is a mans Unhappiness his Mischance or Calamity but not his Fault Nothing can justly be Despised that cannot justly be Blamed and it is a most certain Rule in Reason and moral Philosophy That where there is no Choice there can be no Blame This premised we may take notice of two usual grounds of the Contempt men cast upon the Clergy and yet for which no man ought to think himself at all the more worthy to be Contemned 1. The first is their very Profession it self Concerning which it is a sad but an experimented Truth that the Names derived from it in the refined Language of the present Age are made but the Appellatives of Scorn This is not charged Universally upon all but experience will Affirm or rather proclaim it of much the greater part of the World and men must perswade us that we have lost our Hearing and our common Sence before we can believe the Contrary But surely the Bottom and Foundation of this Behaviour towards Persons set apart for the Service of God that this very Relation should entitle them to such a peculiar Scorn can be nothing else but Atheisme the growing rampant Sin of the Times For call a man Oppressor griping Covetous or over-reaching person and the Word indeed being ill befriended by Custom perhaps sounds not well but generally in the apprehension of the Hearer it signifies no more then that such an one is a Wise and a Thriving or in the common Phrase a Notable man which will certainly procure him a Respect And say of another that he is an Epicure a Loose or a Vicious man and it leaves in men no other Opinion of him then that he is a Merry a Pleasant and a Gentile Person and that he that taxes him is but a Pedant an Vnexperienced and a Morose fellow one that does not know men nor understand what it is to Eat and Drink well But call a man Priest or Parson and you set him in some mens Esteem ten degrees below his own Servant But let us not be Discouraged or Displeased either with our Selves or our Profession upon this account Let the Vertuoso's Mock Insult and Despise on yet after all they shall never be able to Droll away the Nature of things to trample a Pearl into a Pebble nor to make Sacred things Contemptible any more then themselves by such speeches Honourable 2. Another groundless Cause of some mens despising the Governours of our Church is their loss of that former Grandeur and Priviledge that they enjoyed But it is no real Disgrace to the Church meerly to lose her Priviledges but to forfeit them by her Fault or Misdemeanor of which she is not Conscious Whatsoever she injoyed in this kind she readily acknowledges to have streamed from the Royal Munificence and the favours of the Civil Power shining upon the Spiritual which Favours the same Power may retract and gather back into it self when it pleases And we Envy not the Greatness and Lustre of the Romish Clergy neither their Scarlet Gowns nor their Scarlet Sins If our Church cannot be Great which is better she can be Humble and content to be Reformed into as low a Condition as men for their own private Advantage would have her who wisely tell her that it is best and safest for her to be without any Power or Temporal advantage like the good Physician who out of tenderness to his Patient lest he should hurt himself by Drinking was so kind as to rob him of his silver Cup. The Church of England Glories in nothing more then that she is the truest Friend to Kings and to Kingly Government of any other Church in the World that they were the same Hands and Principles that took the Crown from the Kings Head and the Mitre from the Bishops It is indeed the Happiness of some Professions and Callings that they can equally square themselves to and thrive under all Revolutions of Government but the Clergy of England neither know nor affect that Happiness and are willing to be Despised for not doing so And so farr is our Church from encroaching upon the Civil Power as some who are Back-friends to both would maliciously Insinuate that were it stript of the very Remainder of its Priviledges and made as like the Primitive Church for its Bareness as it is already for its Purity it could Cheerfully and what is more Loyally want all such Priviledges and
Authority from his Ordination as was specified in the fifth Verse of the first Chapter And now looking upon Titus under this Qualification he addresses a long Advice and Instruction to him for the discharge of so important a Function all along the first and second Chapter but summs up all in this last Verse which is the subject of the ensuing Discourse and contains in it these two things 1. An account of the Duties of his Place or Office 2. Of the means to facilitate and make effectual their Execution The Duties of his place were two 1. To Teach 2. To Rule Both comprized in these words These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority And then the means the onely means to make him Successful Bright and Victorious in the performance of these great works was to be above Contempt to shine like the Baptist with a clear and a triumphant Light In a word it is every Bishops duty to Teach and to Govern and his way to do it is not to be despised We will discourse of each respectively in their Order 1. And first for the first branch of the great work incumbent upon a Church Ruler which is to Teach A work that none is too great or too high for it is a work of Charity and Charity is the work of Heaven which is always laying it self out upon the Needy and the Impotent nay and it is a work of the highest and the noblest Charity for he that teacheth another gives an Almes to his soul he cloathes the nakedness of his Understanding and relieves the wants of his impoverished Reason he indeed that governs well leads the Blind but he that teaches him gives him Eyes and it is a glorious thing to have been the Recoverer and Repairer of a decayed Intellect and a Sub-worker to Grace in freeing it from some of the inconveniencies of Original sin It is a Benefaction that gives a man a kind of Prerogative for even in the common Dialect of the world every Teacher is called a Master it is the property of Instruction to descend and upon that very account it supposes him that instructs the Superiour or at least makes him so To say a man is advanced too high to condescend to teach the Ignorant is as much as to say that the Sun is in too high a place to shine upon what is below him The Sun is said to rule the day and the Moon to rule the night but do they not Rule them onely by enlighting them Doctrine is that that must prepare men for Discipline and men never go on so cheerfully as when they see where they goe Nor is the dullness of the Scholar to extinguish but rather to enflame the charity of the Teacher for since it is not in men as in vessels that the smallest capacity is the soonest filled where the labour is doubled the value of the work is enhaunced for it is a sowing where a man never expects to reap any thing but the Comfort and Conscience of having done vertuously And yet we know moreover that God sometimes converts even the dull and the slow turning very Stones into Sons of Abraham where besides that the difficulty of the Conquest advances the Trophee of the Conquerer it often falls out that the backward Learner makes amends another way recompencing Sure for Suddain and expiating his want of Docility with a deeper and a more rooted Sincerity Which alone were argument sufficient to inforce the Apostles injunction of being instant in season and out of season even upon the highest and most exalted Ruler in the Church He that sits in Moses chair sits there to Instruct as well as to Rule and a Generals office engages him to Lead as well as to Command his Army In the first of Ecclesiastes Solomon represents himself both as Preacher and King of Israel and every soul that a Bishop gains is a new accession to the extent of his Power he preaches his Jurisdiction wider and enlarges his spiritual Diocess as he enlarges mens apprehensions The Preaching part indeed of a Romish Bishop is easie enough whose Grand business is onely to teach men to be Ignorant to instruct them how to know Nothing or which is all one to know upon Trust to believe implicitly and in a word to see with other mens eyes till they come to be lost in their own souls But our Religion is a Religion that dares to be understood that offers it self to the search of the Inquisitive to the inspection of the severest and the most awakened Reason for being secure of her substantial Truth and Purity she knows that for her to be seen and look into is to be embraced and admired as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light then to see it It needs no Legends no Service in an unknown tongue no inquisition against Scripture no purging out of the heart and sence of Authors no altering or bribing the voice of Antiquity to speak for it it needs none of all these laborious Artifices of ignorance none of all these cloaks and coverings The Romish faith indeed must be covered or it cannot be kept warm and their Clergy deal with their Religion as with a great Crime if it is Discovered they are undone But there is no Bishop of the Church of England but accounts it his Interest as well as his Duty to comply with this Precept of the Apostle Paul to Titus These things teach and exhort Now this Teaching may be effected two ways 1. Immediately by himself 2. Mediately by others And first immediately by himself Where God gives a Talent the Episcopal Robe can be no Napkin to hide it in Change of Condition changes not the abilities of Nature but makes them more illustrious in their exercise and the Episcopal dignity added to a good Preaching faculty is like the erecting of a stately Fountain upon a Spring which still for all that remains as much a Spring as it was before and flows as plentifully onely it flows with the circumstance of greater State and Magnificence Height of place is intended onely to stamp the endowments of a private condition with Lustre and Authority And thanks be to God neither the Churches profess'd enemies nor her pretended friends have any cause to asperse her in this respect as having over her such Bishops as are able to silence the Factious no less by their Preaching then by their Authority But then on the other hand let me add also that this is not so absolutely necessary as to be of the vitall Constitution of this Function He may teach his Diocess who ceases to be able to preach to it for he may do it by appointing Teachers and by a vigilant exacting from them the care and the instruction of their respective Flocks He is the Spiritual father of his Diocess and a Father may see his Children taught though he himself does not turn Schoolmaster It is not the gift of every Person nor
A SERMON Preached at LAMBETH-CHAPPEL on the 25th of November Upon the Consecration of the Right Reverend Father in God Dr JOHN DOLBEN Lord Bishop of ROCHESTER By ROBERT SOUTH D. D. Publick Orator to the University of Oxford and Chaplain to the Lord High Chancellor of ENGLAND SAVOY Printed by Tho. Newcomb for William Nott at the Queens Arms in the middle of the Old Pell-mell near St. James's 1666. To the Right Reverend Father in GOD JOHN Lord Bishop of ROCHESTER Dean of the Cathedral Church of WESTMINSTER And Clerk of the Closet to His Majesty My LORD THough the interposal of my Lord of Canterburies Command for the Publication of this mean Discourse may seem so far to determine as even to take away my Choice yet I must own it to the World that it is solely and entirely my own Inclination seconded by my Obligations to your Lordship that makes this that was so lately an humble Attendant upon your Lordships Consecration now ambitious to Consecrate it self with your Lordships Name It was my Honour to have lived in the same Colledge with your Lordship and now to belong to the same Cathedral where at present you credit the Church as much by your Government as you did the School formerly by your Wit Your Lordship even then grew up into a constant Superiority above others and all your After-greatness seems but a Paraphrase upon those Promising beginnings for what soever you are or shall be has been but an easie Prognostick from what you were It is your Lordships Vnhappiness to be cast upon an Age in which the Church is in its Wane and if you do not those glorious things that our English Prelates did two or three hundred Years since it is not because your Lordship is at all less than they but because the Times are worse Witness those magnificent Buildings in Christ Church in Oxford begun and carried on by your Lordship when by your Place you governed and by your Wisdom encreased the Treasure of that Colledge and which must eternally set your Fame above the reach of Envy and Detraction these great Structures you attempted at a time when you returned Poor and bare to a Colledge as bare after a long Persecution and before you had laid so much as one Stone in the Repairs of your own Fortunes By which incomparably high and generous undertaking you have shewn the World how fit a Person you were to build upon Wolseys foundation A Prelate whose Noble design you Imitate and whose mind you Equal Briefly That Christ-Church stands so high above-ground and that the Church of Westminster lies not flat upon it is your Lordships Commendation And therefore your Lordship is not behind hand with the Church paying it as much Credit and Support as you receive from it for you owe your Promotion to your Merit and I am sure your Merit to your Self All men Court you not so much because a great Person as a Publick good For as a Friend there is none so hearty so Nobly warm and active to make good all the Offices of that endearing Relation As a Patron none more able to oblige and reward your Dependants and which is the Crowning Ornament of Power none more willing And lastly as a Diocesan you are like even to out-do your self in all other Capacities and in a word to exemplifie and realize every Word of the following Discourse which is here most humbly and gratefully presented to your Lordship by Your Lordships most obliged Servant ROBERT SOUTH From St. James's Dec. 3. 1666. A SERMON Preached at LAMBETH-CHAPPEL on the 25th of November Upon the Consecration of the Right Reverend Father in God Dr JOHN DOLBEN Lord Bishop of ROCHESTER 2 Titus last Verse These things Speak and Exhort and Rebuke with all Authority let no man Despise thee IT may possibly be expected that the very taking of my Text out of this Epistle to Titus may engage me in a Discourse about the Nature Original and Divine Right of Episcopacy and if it should it were no more then what some of the greatest and the learned'st persons in the world when men served Truth instead of Design had done before For I must profess that I cannot look upon Titus as so far Vnbishopt yet but that he still exhibits to us all the Essentials of that Jurisdiction that to this day is claimed for Episcopal We are told in the fifth Verse of the first Chapter That he was left in Crete to set things in order and to ordain Elders in every City which Text one would think were sufficiently clear and full and too big with Evidence to be perverted but when we have seen Rebellion commented out of the thirteenth of the Romans and since there are few things but admit of Gloss and probability and consequently may be expounded as well as disputed on both sides it is no such wonder that some would bear the world in hand that the Apostles design and meaning is for Presbytery though his words are all the time for Episcopacy No wonder I say to us at least who have conversed with too many strange unparallel'd Actions Occurrences and Events now to wonder at any thing Wonder is from Surprize and Surprize ceases upon Experience I am not so much a Friend to the stale Starched Formality of Preambles as to detain so great an Audience with any praevious discourse extrinsick to the Subject matter and design of the Text and therefore I shall fall directly upon the Words which run in the form of an Exhortation though in appearance a very strange one for the matter of an Exhortation should be something naturally in the Power of him to whom the Exhortation is directed For no man exhorts another to be strong beautiful witty or the like these are the felicities of some Conditions the objects of more Wishes but the effects of no mans Choice Nor seems there any greater reason for the Apostles exhorting Titus That no man should despise him for how could another mans Action be his Duty Was it in his power that men should not be wicked and injurious and if such persons would despise him could any thing pass an obligation upon him not to be despised No this cannot be the meaning and therefore it is clear that the Exhortation lies not against the Action it self which is onely in the Despisers power but against the just occasion of it which is in the will and power of him that is Despised it was not in Titus's power that men should not despise him but it was in his power to bereave them of all just cause of doing so it was not in his power not to be Derided but 't was in his power not to be Ridiculous In all this Epistle it is evident that St. Paul looks upon Titus as advanced to the dignity of a prime Ruler of the Church and entrusted with a large Diocess containing many particular Cities under the immediate Government of their respective Elders and those deriving